Infarcted myocardium exhibits late gadolinium hyper-enhancement (LGE) and is usually imaged with an inversion recovery (IR) sequence. The inversion time (TI) is typically set to null normal myocardial signal in order to maximize luminance contrast between normal and infarcted myocardium. A multi-slice multi-planar 2D (two dimensional) approach requiring multiple breath-holds (BH) is commonly used in routine clinical practice. An additional BH TI scout is utilized to determine the precise null time of normal myocardium in individual patients. The TI that is chosen and subsequently applied may not adequately null normal myocardium as 2D multi BH imaging proceeds over several minutes, due to gadolinium washout kinetics. Phase-sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR) imaging minimizes the need to precisely null normal myocardium, but as it requires two ECG signal RR wave peaks per trigger, BH 3D PSIR LGE imaging is challenging to perform. Highly accelerated 3D LGE enables acquisition of data at the same time point of contrast kinetics, which helps provide uniform suppression of the volume of normal myocardium within the imaged volume. However, this method still requires a TI scout and demonstrates relatively low signal noise ratio (SNR) compared to 2D methods due to the high acceleration factor and IR pulse used. Moreover, isotropic data is desired. A system according to invention principles addresses these deficiencies and needs and related problems.